It will play until the day

I have a down view about the year's music at the end of almost every year, always starting my look back thinking there wasn't that much to get excited about. But once I start listening back to the year's songs, I've always found that, when concentrated into my favorites of the year, I've been struck breathless and sent dancing (a dangerous combination) by how great the year was after all.

That didn't really happen this year. I love my mix, and it's been a pleasure to listen to, but 2006 was a year that lacked revelation. It has great songs up one side and down the other like all years, but there's been precious few songs that blow apart my conceptions of what music can do, whether it's in new sounds or just those amazing songs whose perfect quality I can't even imagine in spite of their reality.

It was a year when my favorite band (and favorite album) was a mashing up of familiar styles of the '60's and '70's, when one of the most fun records (Girl Talk's Night Ripper) was a creative DJ mash up mix, when an imaginative Beatles compilation was one of the most enjoyable listens of the year. My favorite songs of 2006 include a remix of one of my favorite songs of 2005, a re-working of a 30-year-old found recording, and one of the best records of the year sounded like it could have well been released in 1993. It's fitting (or maybe telling) that a good chunk of my musical 2006 was spent cultivating a library of songs from the '60's. Why not go directly to the source?

Aw, now I feel a little sorry for these songs. They didn't do anything wrong. They're all fantastic, which is why they made the cut. But most of them are flings; songs that it seems hard to imagine me still thinking of years from now. We had a good time, 2006, and I wish I could tell you that I'm sorry it's over, but I'm ready to move on.

A couple of disclaimers, because I love disclaiming: I put a lot of time and thought into the running order, but about half of these songs have already made an appearance on this site before. They're asterisked for your convenience. And sorry for the amount of time it took to post this. I consider it tradition to wait until the previous year seems old and outdated before I revisit it.

And while this should go without saying, it will go with saying: your favorite songs of 2006 are requested in the comments.

2006: When Everything's In Tune and Everything's In Time
Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, "Happy"
M. Ward, "To Go Home"
Mates of State, "For the Actor"
The Pipettes, "Pull Shapes"
Camera Obscura, "Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken"
Sondre Lerche, "Phantom Punch"
Guillemots, "Trains to Brazil"
Belle & Sebastian, "White Collar Boy"
DJ Shadow, "This Time (I'm Gonna Try It My Way)"
Girl Talk, "Hold Up"
Mr. Lif, "Brothaz"
LCD Soundsystem, "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House (Soulwax Shibuya Mix)"
Cansei de Ser Sexy, "Let's Make Love and Listen Death From Above"
Lily Allen, "Knock 'em Out"
Phoenix, "Second to None"
Artic Monkeys, "Fake Tales of San Francisco"
Peter, Bjorn & John, "Objects of My Affection"
Page France, "Chariot"
Sparrow House, "When I Am Gone"
Jarvis Cocker, "Big Julie"
Cat Power, "The Greatest"

The songs passed their expiration date and were removed from our inventory. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Required reading: Best 2006 albums | 2005 mix

Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, "Happy"
There's two constants in my music-loving life that gets this song to me. The first is that I love singing Patsy Cline in the shower. Really just about any torchy country tune with a bending melody will do, but I default to "Walking After Midnight". The other constant is that I like pure singing; voices that are free of affectations and contrived style. Jenny Lewis: please report to my shower. Rowrr...
Best part: At 1:59, when the electric guitar combines with the busier vocal line at "They warn you about killers and thieves in the night, I worry about cancer and living right."

M. Ward, "To Go Home" *
It must be frustrating to a songwriter when the one song that everyone fixates on is the one song on your album that's a cover. While you'd be flattered that you did a good job of a song you love, I'm sure it'd be really tough to keep away the insecurities that maybe your songwriting will never measure up to that of your idols. Maybe other people who loved M. Ward's album would disagree, but this song's beauty pretty much drowned out the rest of the album for me.
Best part: One of the greatest things about country and "Americana" music is that you almost always get the melodic resolution that you crave. It's those notes that comfort because they're exactly what you expected and needed, like a perfectly-done happy ending in a movie. Just after that melodic resolution of "...I go home", when the acoustic guitars sound full and rich, I feel the best kind of collapse as the wonderful chorus has turned out exactly as I hoped it would.

Mates of State, "For the Actor"
When an act chooses to go for a softer sound, it can be sour if it's done for safety and wider appeal. But some acts—especially in the indie world—need some softening and clarifying; they need to find a way to let their strengths shine by toning down the quirks. And so it is with Mates of State. Their famous sing-yelling always sounded to me like two kids fighting in the backseat of a car on a family vacation. But with their last album, they toned it down a bit (just a little bit) and their amazing arrangements and melodies are easier to take in multiple doses, making Mates of State enjoyable as well as appreciable. They still need to work on the excessive repetition, but first things first.
Best part: One of my favorite music geek moments of the year is at 1:31, when Kori gives a perfect, goose-bumping harmony vocal at "and the shape of your hands do tell." It's gorgeous, and it's there for only one split second.

The Pipettes, "Pull Shapes"
One of the things that I loved about the Pipettes debut album is that it's exactly what every debut should be: a great all-around record with that single perfect song. "Pull Shapes" is exactly that song, the one that starts out as a clear standout, but as the song progresses, it throws out any question of what's the best song on the album. Song of the year.
Best part: I have a very difficult time thinking of any sung line that's as persuading as "Clap your hands if you want some more". It turned my bedroom into a concert hall on many occasions in 2006.

Camera Obscura, "Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken" *
Camera Obscura's entry on this CD could have been several other songs from their fantastic third album. "If Looks Could Kill" and "Razzle Dazzle Rose" both shook me a little more than this one. But this one made the cut partly because it seems to pack all of Camera Obscura's charms into one convenient package. And it's easily the best song title of the year.
Best part: The appeal of this song mostly lives in the lovely choruses, but I do love how the trumpet part that doubles the guitar slowly fades in.

Sondre Lerche, "Phantom Punch"
On my first listen to this song, I started with a cynical view. It sounds a little like Sondre's just trying to toughen and pop his sound. As the song went on, I heard that the hooks were genuine, that the production is perfect for the song, that the beat is genius, and SWEET SMOKING JESUS THAT GUITAR RIFF IS PERFECT!!!!
Best part: Did I mention the guitar riff that starts in the second chorus? The perfect one? Starts in the second chorus? Listen out for the perfect one. It's perfect.

Guillemots, "Trains to Brazil"
A majority of my current year listening happens in three places: standing at the sink and shaving, walking along noisy city streets and on the metro. This doesn't really give quiet music a fair shake, since they're so hard to hear. As a result, most of the Guillemot's album was lost to the noise of life, and I was left with only the three loudest songs from the album: the epic "Sao Paulo", the impossibly beautiful "Annie, Let's Not Wait" and "Trains To Brazil", a song that finds that perfect combination of soaring melodies and pounding drums. Almost every motion of the melody slays me.
Best part: The chills come in at, "Darling, they remind me of when we were at school." I don't know why. They just do.

Belle & Sebastian, "White Collar Boy"
Until just before this year-end compilation of mine went to press (read: I got around to finishing it off), the B&S representative was "The Blues Are Still Blue", which was by far and away my most played song this year. Then I realized that, while I may have listened to it more, it was actually "White Collar Boy" that sounded more like 2006, and was the song that will most remind me of the year. That moment when the instruments drop out and Stuart Murdoch sing, "She said, 'You ain't ugly, you can kiss me if you like'" is the moment that most thrilled me at their shows and is the line that will always remind me of the year.
Best part: refer to line quoted above.

DJ Shadow, "This Time (I'm Gonna Try It My Way)" *
It's the classic "one man's trash" story: a guy recording in the '70's is getting warmed up by singing this song. It gets recorded and years later, DJ Shadow adds a beat and some disco strings. So don't throw away those recordings you and your friends singing "Seventh Graders Stink" into a cassette recorder. Could be gold someday.
Best part: I don't know if the mystery '70's guy wrote the little bit, but that second, "this time" is a gem.

Girl Talk, "Hold Up" *
I would say that this song haunted me, but that doesn't seem like the right word. "Haunted" is the kind of thing you'd say about a heartbreaking, beautiful song, and this one is neither. It'd be more accurate to say this song stalked me. I woke up in the morning and there it was in my head. It popped up at inopportune times and refused to leave me alone. And just like in a romantic comedy, the initial friction melted away and we fell in love by the end. And also like in a romantic comedy, you don't see what happens after the credits roll, and as in all those movies, we're breaking up. But it was fun while it lasted.
Best parts: the chopping up of "Where Is My Mind" (1:05-1:47) and "Say It Ain't So" (2:42-2:50)

Mr. Lif, "Brothaz"
It's with a push of my glasses up the bridge of my nose and my most nasally nerd voice that I admit that I found this song on Pitchfork's Festival sampler.

So it's true: I'm only a hip-hop dabbler. But while part of it is my attachment to indiepop, part of it is the reviews. Most hip-hop reviews fixate on the lyrics, and if you're lucky, they'll refer to the production using words like "sparse" or "killer". Hip-hop is wide open to production innovation, and it kills me that most of it is of the "set drum machine to 'slow funk'" variety. But when someone steps out and lets the production set the song, it can be incredible, as it is on this song. Raising up Mr. Lif's slightly-above-average rhyming (is it just me, or is profit/prophet the fire/desire of political rap?) is El-P's amazing production. It's the off-kilter, swoozy beat, the brilliant demented doubled vocal in the chorus, the punctuation of the double bass fill, and the horn bit that made this song one that thrilled me when it was served up on shuffle.
Best part: at the end of it all, the horn swells have built to a dramatic, spooky ending.

LCD Soundsystem, "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House (Soulwax Shibuya Mix)"
When the first Chemical Brothers record came out in 1995, it was a revelation to me. It had the excitement of great dance music with honest soul grit (even if that grit was borrowed). But the most exciting part of the music (especially the 1996 single "Loops of Fury") was that it seemed to light a path to a new kind of exciting pop arrangement. There were no traditional verses and choruses. It was all about The Build; about leading loops to a brain-rattling, intensely hyperactive moment, when the snare hits sped up to almost a single note, and the synth sounds distorted to a squeal. It made me want to squeal.

I've heard this arrangement around since then. It was made Daft Punks first two records so exciting. And it's exactly what I adore about LCD Soundsystem: James Murphy has that perfect sense of the big beat-style climax. And while this mix takes out the staggering party genius of the original, it adds in those moments that are pure aural adrenaline. And even better, there's two of those moments in this song.
Best part: What comes after "Downtown" makes me so spazzy it's scary.

Cansei de Ser Sexy, "Let's Make Love and Listen Death From Above"
There's not much to defend this song. You could use the "dumb fun" plea, and it'd probably be enough to get you off. You could point out the great bass line, but a counter would be that it's so familiar that it could have come off a CD of stock loops. But when a song is as much of a self-contained instant dance party as this one, all judgment is off.
Best part: I love English-as-a-second language lyrics. You get phrases that no native English speaker could ever come up with no matter how high they were. This is my way of saying that the nonsense of the line, "Kiss me, I'm drunk. Don't worry, it's true" makes me smile every time.

Lily Allen, "Knock 'em Out" *
I have something to tell you that may be a little hard for you to hear: I don't make these mixes for you. I make them for myself. They're archives of my year, giving a soundtrack to the past events as much as being a catalog of my favorite songs. It's the soundtrack part of it that often decides which songs I put on it, and this is especially the case with Lily Allen. "LDN" was probably my favorite song on the record, but it was "Knock 'em Out" that I heard the most, as it became my friend Rachael's favorite song and a constant at the dance parties she often hosted at her house. If "Pull Shapes" was my favorite song of the year, this song is the one that's most represents the fun times I had, the one that will be played in the trailers for the film retelling of my 2006, which is currently being pitched to all the major film companies.
Best part: Will there ever be a time when the third line technique doesn't work? When you let the first two lines of a chorus have the same melody and then lift it for the third line? It works every time with me.

Phoenix, "Second to None"
In the future, shuffle technology will apply to individual mix CDs. You'll be able to make one track be multiple tracks, so you won't have to make difficult decisions about which of a bunch of songs to put on the mix. If it existed today, I could have put the entire Phoenix album on here; a lazy sort of "Oh, it's all good" point. But as it is, I went with this song. Because it's good, which, if you haven't noticed yet, is part of the strict criteria for this mix.

I'm kidding of course. In the future, CDs won't exist any more.
Best part: When the "I thought I heard a lie"s just pack up on top of each other in a moment of brilliant intensity.

Artic Monkeys, "Fake Tales of San Francisco"
Over the last few years, I've found myself taking an anti-rockist stance. Every other year, there's articles about how rock is dying, and then the next year, some band is pronounced the saviors of rock. But it needs to die. We need to get over this idea that music needs to be loud and rebellious to be worthwhile. The possibilities of tunes are endless if people lose the idea that music needs to rock to be valid.

Because of this, I was not just skeptical of Arctic Monkeys, but they made me annoyed. They were just another band that brought back that prejudice that good music has to rock. But the thing is...they do rock. Really, really hard. There's moments all over the album that all but justify every rockist tenet, showing that loud guitars and crashing drums can be as exciting that anything else anyone's been able to dream up in the last year.

It's not that I'm giving up on being anti-rockist. But I was reminded that there will always be plenty of room for great guitar/bass/drums/distortion rock 'n' roll.
Best part: This song is a definite example of a song that starts out as average but becomes amazing at the end. And when the distortion is ratcheted up at "Yeah, I'd love to tell you all my problem", it's as satisfying a rock moment as I've known.

Peter, Bjorn & John, "Objects of My Affection" *
PB&J's "Young Folks" was all over year-end music lists and it certainly deserves the praise. It's as catchy as indie pop gets. But it was this song, with it's peanut-butter-and-chocolate combo of woody acoustics and woozy distortion cameos that grabbed me from the first listen. And there's also the little matter of that perfect chord change at the now of "I cry more often now."
Best part: "I am more me" is another case of a perfect melodic resolution. Dreamy.

Page France, "Chariot"
If I was better versed in pitch and keys and melodic structure, I could tell you exactly what kind of music hits my heart immediately. I could tell you exactly what kind of melodic change makes me melt the very first time I hear a song. Then I tell you exactly what part of that first chord change and melody that just somehow works that gets to me every time.
Best part: I just can't pin it down. Just can't. So I just let those first few chord changes wash over me as though it was a single moment.

Sparrow House, "When I Am Gone" *
Guy singing a quiet song with a delicately picked acoustic guitar. Heard it before? We all have. Which is why this song is such an accomplishment: to do something so familiar (and even a near rip-off of Nico's "These Days") and make it sound as though it was the first to hit on the sound is nothing short of a minor miracle.
Best part: the way the harmony vocal softly eases in at "...so alone".

Jarvis Cocker, "Big Julie"
It's hard to imagine the sound of Jarvis Cocker's voice ever losing it's power on me. Even in Pulp's more dull later songs and even in the terrible Relaxed Muscle songs, it was still that sound of wisdom, the sound of someone who'd seen the most most fun times of life and the saddest times and knows exactly where they intersect. It's the sound of the uncertain years I spent after college, where Jarvis' words seemed to be written for me: "And where will you go and how will you know you didn't get it all wrong?"

I can't really figure out what Big Julie's about. She's been put down and picked on somehow. She has world views, but it's hard to know exactly what's prompted them. But Jarvis knows everything about her, and even if the dots don't seem to connect logically, it's delivered with that voice that says that Julie is someone we all relate to, whose story illustrates everything about what's wrong with the world and what we need to get through it.
Best part: The first few times I heard it, the held out and heightened "play" at the end. It's a song where, from the beginning, you know it's moving towards ever-extended choruses, and that climax is inevitable. But the more I listened, the more I realized that the best moment is a few lines before that, as Jarvis sings, "but tonight it seems to light the way." It's that line that makes points the way to that climaxed line, the one where you realize where you're in for, and the thrill of the last 40 seconds of this song was the greatest of the year, even the song of the year (trust me: it makes sense).

Cat Power, "The Greatest"
I'm sure there's some sort of harsh psychological analysis of my love for sad songs. It's not that they say so much. It's just a horrible pull of those minor chords, of those songs that are the musical equivalent of someone weeping. This song could be about how much Chan Marshall loves eating grape popsicles and it'd still be heartbreaking.
Best part: Those swooning strings are exactly what the word "haunting" was made for.